Home healthcare sees larger role amid Covid-19, seeks insurance coverage

The home healthcare industry sees Covid-19 broadening its relevance across the country, as it helps treat those with mild symptoms of the disease at home itself, with professional support. The pandemic has changed the way the home healthcare industry works and the standard operating procedures and the services it offers, industry experts said.

Covid-19 has expanded the market for home healthcare providers, enabling them to provide both at-home healthcare and remote healthcare,  apart from reaching out to corporates, said Vishal Bali, co-founder and chairman of Medwell Ventures, which runs the Mahindra group-backed home healthcare firm Nightingales.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has shown the importance of home healthcare in the healthcare delivery ecosystem. Many Covid-19 patients with mild symptoms actually recovered at their residences under constant medical supervision and nursing care. Home healthcare, along with remote monitoring and tele-health technologies, has a critical role to play in out-of-hospital care delivery. Patients with chronic diseases can be very effectively treated at home with specialised nursing and physiotherapy at a lower cost than hospitalisation," Bali said. 

Besides, with the number of Covid-19 infection rising and the healthcare infrastructure and resources limited, home healthcare could help to address a portion of the present healthcare requirement.

What's more, with the lockdown being relaxed and corporates opening up, there has to be some clinical care and remote supervision for their staff. If any employees have the slightest of fever, cough or cold, there has to be a remote way of calming people and informing them what is a Covid-19 symptom and what isn't and when they need to go for testing. The system will also guide them in keeping themselves safe, in case they have any Covid-19 symptoms. The clinical offering of home healthcare services, will be required to constantly counsel patients and do remote consultation through tele-medicine or video consultation.

"The Indian home healthcare market was projected to be at around $6 billion in the pre-Covid-19 period. I see that in the backdrop of the Covid-19, it is now a near $10 billion opportunity, to be achieved in next three to four years," Bali added.

Portea Medical, a major home healthcare player in the country, said it is looking at tie ups with State governments to manage Covid-19 quarantined patients. "We are talking to some state governments about quarantine management and managing low intensity covid-19 cases at home," said Meena Ganesh, MD & CEO of Portea Medical.

She said the pandemic had changed many of the ways the company has been operating earlier. "When the lockdown was imminent and we knew there were going to be restrictions and travel within the city was going to be a problem, we got in touch with the patients and made arrangements for one healthcare professional to stay with them, so that traveling could be reduced." Services to the electives declined initially, while new services liked chemotherapy and iron supplement treatment for anaemic patients through IV has been added to its services post Covid-19, as per the request of its partner hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

With a pool of around one million patients who have got in touch with the company at one stage or the other, Portea has launched a tele-consultancy service. Before Covid-19, there were 10,000-12,000 patients on its platform every month, but that number came down to about 8,000 in April though there was some improvement later. The situation is likely to improve with elective medical procedures expected to come back after the lockdown is lifted.

Portea recently partnered with the Government of Goa and customer engagement automation platform Verloop to launch the Cobot-19 Information and Awareness Chatbot. It is aimed at helping people resolve their queries about precautions to be taken to avoid infection, among other things, and as a one-stop source of authentic information. Again, in collaboration with Verloop, it has partnered with the High Commission of Canada in India to develop an automated multilingual chatbot called CANbot, as a one-stop source of information for Indian nationals, students and PIOs in Canada, it said.

The industry also feels it is time for the health insurance companies to create products where home healthcare expenses are reimbursed to patients. The Covid-19 crisis has proven with evidence that every hospital bed in this country is precious for acute care, they said.

As in the case of the hospital sector, the cost of home healthcare treatment has also increased because of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), which itself would cost at Rs 1,000-2000. Bali expects the cost may go up by about 10 per cent, though it could still be much cheaper than hospitalisation. There are several conversations with various insurance providers, for whom data is critical, to bring in insurance products specific to home healthcare sector, Bali added.